


The Patrician is Dead. Long Live the Patrician.

by Veul_McLannon



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drumknott does a lot of blacking out in this one, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, I really owe him the upcoming Very Cute Gay Story, M/M, The rating is for strong language; that's all there is, also THERE IS A REASON THERE IS NO ARCHIVE WARNING #spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veul_McLannon/pseuds/Veul_McLannon
Summary: Vetinari has died (or has he?). Drumknott is coping Incredibly Well (or is he?). Moist is the new Patrician (or i- oh no wait, he definitely is).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I saw someone mention that Moist was being set up to become the next Patrician, which. Stellar, inspired, love it. However, the idea that Vetinari might somehow die was so abhorrent to me that of course I had to write it. Or rather, write Something. (There’s a reason there’s no character death warning #spoilers)

Moist von Lipwig, incumbent Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, stood on the balcony of the Oblong Office, looking apprehensively out over that same dread mistress. Adora would not be pleased; everyone knew the city was a jealous and vindictive lover. He took a deep breath.

“Mr Drumknott?”

“Yes, sir,” came a reply so soft it was barely more than a whisper, from a man who had surely not been _quite_ so close at hand two seconds ago.

Moist almost jumped off the parapet in shock. “Good gods man, they should put a bell on you! Can you at least _try_ to be a bit more, well... loud?” he ended lamely. He knew that the man was quiet at the best of times, but this level of reservation was far beyond that of the Expertly Unnerving Secretary to which he had previously been exposed. Well, he supposed it had been a rather tiring day, all things considered.

“Yes, sir,” was the equally soft reply.

Moist valiantly and successfully resisted the urge to turn his eyes to the heavens. He of all people knew there were no gods there to solicit.

“Drumknott, I know it is the Patrician’s prerogative to decide on their staff at the beginning of their tenure, but – well, given my predecessor and the planning which no doubt went into staff-related decisions along with everything else, I have decided that nothing shall change. You all are staying on, if you want.”

“Thank you, sir.” His tone never changed, never wavered. His gaze stayed fixed at a point which might be considered the middle distance, wherever that was floating about these days.

“Well.” Moist was now rather at a loss, and not a little concerned. Adora wasn’t like this; if she had problems you damn well _knew_ about them. As did half the street. “That’s that sorted then. Um, Drumknott, you just head on and do... whatever it is you do, then. I have a meeting with the Guilds at 2pm.”

“Yes, sir.” When Moist next looked around, he was gone.

Strange man, Moist thought to himself, before continuing to leaf through the planner left by his predecessor to the new Patrician. He would have a lot to live up to, but the key was in the sparkle after all. He thought of his Hat, the Hat which had started it all, now gracing the head of some other bugger, and smiled.

***

Everyone died of old age eventually. Nobody should have to wake up next to their significant other in such a state, however often it must, statistically, occur.

Drumknott hadn’t cried. When he woke at their usual five in the morning and rolled over to greet his bedfellow, his first response was to freeze. He must have stared at the corpse for a full minute as his brain attempted to process what his eyes were seeing.

Then after the requisite checking of pulses and ascertaining of things like rigor mortis, all the while pretending that this body hadn’t formerly housed the thoughts and feelings of his lover of over twenty years, he got dressed and walked – walked! – to the nearest guardsman and quietly told him to go and get Commander Vimes.

Then, he went to his desk in the anteroom to the Oblong Office to wait, while cancelling the Patrician’s appointments for that morning. No point in sitting and crying when there was work which had to be done.

When the Commander arrived, he got up and showed him silently to their room. It took all of four seconds for Sir Samuel to ascertain the reason for his being called, and the look of unbridled pity and sorrow he bestowed on Drumknott, standing still by the door, was almost enough to make him break down.

But he didn’t. He made eye contact instead, and suggested a Watchman was sent to fetch Lipwig.

The Commander’s eyes almost bulged out of his skull in shock at that news, but he uncharacteristically said nothing and did as he was told. Drumknott stayed standing still by the door, eyes fixed on the far wall.

The Watchman returned with the hastily-dressed conman (or rather, the Patrician, as he was now) in short order; five minutes later another arrived with an Igor, who began tending to the cadaver still wrapped in the bedsheets.

Drumknott left and returned to his desk, where he was more needed.

It was a few minutes after seven o’clock finished that the door to the Oblong Office opened, and Lipwig stepped out, looking uncomfortable in his own clothes but smiling in a manner designed, evidently, to reassure. He really needn’t have bothered; Drumknott could see through all but the most skilled of deceivers, and while Lipwig was good, he was no Havelock Vetinari. He accidentally snapped his pencil under the table and schooled his features into polite interest.

“Please come in, Mr Drumknott. I have some information for you.”

***

Drumknott left the office at his customary seven post-meridian. Ankh-Morpork certainly did not care that her master was dead, he who had played her so carefully and so precisely for so long. She would continue as she always had, and Drumknott had to ensure that all he could do, he did.

Vimes had mentioned something rather awkwardly about “compassionate leave” at around three o’clock, probably at the behest of Lady Sybil. Drumknott was of the opinion that leave after the mortality was less “compassionate” and more an exhortation to tidy up what remained of the deceased’s life. There was nothing to tidy of Havelock Vetinari’s, and thus no unnecessary holidays would be taken.

He walked to the home he visited once every fortnight, the same way he always did, followed, as he always was, by one of the Assassins employed at the Palace. The Assassin was less careful than usual, however. As he let himself into his front room, he saw the shadowy figure vanish down a side street. It seemed a change in leader did affect some in their work.

He closed the door and set his bag down neatly on the floor, equidistant between the sideboard and the door frame. Everything was the same as it had been two weeks ago. Of course. He had paid his Thieves’ Guild tariff.

The house was silent and dark, just as it always was. Nothing had changed.

He would take a nightcap and go to bed. It had been a long day.

He took two steps towards the drawing room door before stumbling, crumpling onto the floor like so much waste paper. He hit the carpet like a whisper of silk, only the smallest gasp escaping his lips. He did not cry. What was the point in crying? It achieved nothing except a headache.

The world continued around him in the dark, supremely unaware that it no longer contained the wisest and best man it had seen for centuries. Drumknott felt very small, suddenly.

There was no point in crying.

He began counting the threads on the carpet in front of him. His eyes stung.

_Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine-_

His throat hurt. He lost count.

What _was_ the point?

On the floor in the hall of a middle-of-the-road, sensible, three-bedroom house in Hoton Street, Rufus Drumknott gave in and let the tears come.

***

At some point in the following four hours, Drumknott managed to manoeuvre from the hall floor to an armchair by the cold grate. Fires were lit as and when he remembered – he hadn’t remembered, didn’t want to remember, _never_ wanted to remember that cold, awful face – and was doing his best to ensure the continuance of all of these states by drinking an entire bottle of Bearhugger’s Old Persnickety.

Not straight from the bottle, of course; clerk’s dignity had been so instilled in him that it had never crossed his mind. What _had_ crossed his mind was the potential for drinking so much that he became supremely unaware of the past, the present or any future – if indeed a future was on the agenda. While alcohol normally had little effect on him, an entire bottle of Bearhugger’s best has been known to blind the uninitiated.

He tipped the bottle slightly to empty the dregs, downed the glass, set both items carefully on the floor, and promptly passed out, tears still leaking from behind closed eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Drumknott peeled opened his eyes, still curled in the armchair by the guttered fire.

He screamed,* nearly falling backwards off his armchair, a fact which he, Drumknott, contrary to literary tradition, would stand staunchly by in future years when his life partner and absolute bastard suggested such idiotic things as “Oh, perhaps you should take out the bins,” or “Look, you’re closer to the dog, it’s your turn to walk him”, or even “I used to be your boss,” at which point Drumknott would throw something at him.

The chair was caught before it hit the ground by the tall, thin figure which had been standing in front of him when he opened his eyes.

 _Fantastic_ , thought Drumknott. _I’ve gone mad with grief_. Now _how am I supposed to keep Lipwig in line?_

Out loud he made a noise not unlike that of a startled moorhen and scrambled backwards over the arm of the chair in an attempt to get his back against the wall.**

It was some minutes of mutual silence later that Drumknott finally spoke, as he was only feeling more ill the longer the vacuum continued. He was awake, certainly. He was either mad, then, or this was some kind of sick joke. Or a murder in the offing. He swallowed.

“What...” he managed, before his tentative and grief-fuelled grasp on gravity failed him and he slipped, clutching at the wall sconce for balance.

“What...” he tried again, and found he couldn’t continue. He sighed.

“Get on with it then,” he settled for; death, robbery, ill-conceived jokes, hallucination... it couldn’t be worse than the current state of reality.

The figure looked puzzled, momentarily, before the voice of Havelock Vetinari spoke. “Rufus. It’s me.”

A shaky “ _hah..._ ” was the only response he could muster.

The apparition had the look of a person screwing the proverbial to the sticking point, before it continued somewhat haltingly, “The... issue this morning was, I regret to say, a very expert application of appropriate makeup on the part of certain Igorinas to the corpse of Charlie, who unfortunately passed away yesterday evening.”

In the face of the continued lack of reply, it continued. “I had contingencies in place for such an event, allowing for our quiet retirement and the simple installation of Mr Lipwig in the position of Patrician as previously discussed... it was with considerable consternation that I was obliged to withhold the knowledge from you, Rufus, I promise you that.”

A pause, then, “I grant I should probably have had more faith in your acting skills, but I... I never dreamed you would... that is to say, I may have misjudged your depth of feeling.”

Ah. A hallucination then. Not a chance Vetinari would own up to something like that.

“... Rufus, please speak to me,” the vision said, as close to pleading as he could remember, to a man still, for all intents and purposes, focussed on holding up the wall.

“You are not.” Drumknott took a deep breath. “Real.” He felt light-headed suddenly, his eyes burning. “You are not.” He wanted to sleep. In sleep he wasn’t accosted by ghosts of men he had loved. Maybe after sleep it would go away and he could... try again. He would never continue, he knew that. Who could continue after Vetinari?

Blackness encroached upon the edge of his vision, and he sighed gratefully as oblivion descended. Everything would be gone in the morning. Everything.

***

It was still night when Drumknott awoke on the floor. Would this night never end? Would he never escape? The apparition had thankfully vanished, but... why was he covered with the blanket from upstairs? He scrubbed his eyes weakly and got to his feet. He was remembering too much again; another bottle of Bearhugger’s might be in order.

Having come to this conclusion, he began the journey to the drinks cabinet to the right of the parlour door – which meant that when a man in black came through it with a tea tray, he almost had a heart attack on the spot.

SHAME, said Death to an audience of none, watching from the shadows. THESE DAYS I COULD REALLY DO WITH A MAN WHO UNDERSTANDS A FILING SYSTEM.

Drumknott had retreated so fast in his shock that his back was, once again, to the hard and reassuring presence of the wall. The bearer of the tea tray set it on the coffee table and turned up the lamp (which certainly hadn’t been lit earlier).

“How... Rufus, are you with me now?” the man asked gently, keeping his distance as one would with an easily spooked horse.

Drumknott considered the adage that, whenever the impossible had been eliminated, whatever remained had to be the truth, and dismissed it as gibberish. On the other hand, it was best to be certain that one was hallucinating before handing in one’s notice. In the end, he could do worse than a phantasmal Vetinari; it was infinitely preferable to none.

“Havelock...” Drumknott whispered, taking a cautious step closer and away from the dubious safety of the wall. “Havelock, I-” he took the final step towards the other man, hand outstretched, and made contact with a quantity of black worsted and a corporeal, nay solid, chest. He snatched his hand back, strangling a gasp, and covered his mouth with both hands, backing away.

It was several seconds before he looked up again, despair and hope warring on his face. The man hadn’t moved, and there was something in his eyes that Drumknott had, and would always, give everything for.

“Havelock-” he choked, and flung himself at the other man, who nearly staggered back under the onslaught. His hands bunched in the black fabric as though that way he might prevent the Assassin from withdrawing, as though he could bring them closer than the layers of fabric, and the laws of physics, allowed. His breath kept catching in his throat. They stood that way for a good three minutes, before Drumknott inhaled deeply and pulled away a little, looking up with a tear-streaked face and shining eyes.

Then he slapped him. The noise reverberated around the wood-panelled room, and he felt a little pride, quickly quashed by blind fury,***in managing to evince nothing other than pure surprise on the so calm, so quiet face.

“You _bastard_! You _filthy, slimy_ little snake! You _absolute_... despicable... _cur_!” He fought back the tears threatening again and forced the words past his lips, his face contorting with the effort. He focused on breathing and on not punching the man in front of him. The former was by far the easier of the two. “How _DARE_ you put me through that – how _dare you_! _Twenty years_ we have been together, _Havelock bloody Vetinari_ , and you couldn’t even have the _decency_ to tell me what stupid fucking harebrained bloody scheme you were planning?! _HOW DARE YOU?!_ ”

Vetinari actually did step back this time, as though the words, spinning through the night air, really were physically dangerous. He looked at the man with the twisted face, breathing so heavily it looked as though his lungs were trying to escape him – and found he had nothing to say. An apology couldn’t possibly suffice. Rufus was right. The speed with which the deception had to be enacted had blinded him to the fact that there were considerations other than politics. A stray thought nudged at his brain, one which had never before had reason to call.

 _You’re not good enough, Vetinari. Look at what you’ve_ done _, Vetinari._

He shook it away, but the fact remained that the thought had _appeared_ , something it had never dared, nor had need, to do previously. To say he was perturbed was putting it mildly.

“You made up _Charlie_?! And you _didn’t tell me?!_ ” Drumknott’s voice was swiftly entering the realm of the hysterical. Outside, a dog started howling.

Vetinari looked as horrified as Drumknott had ever seen him, if he had been able to process things like the facial expressions of total, _utter bastards_. The anger, though, evaporated as fast as it had come, quickly replaced by exhaustion.

“Why...” came a whisper so small that Vetinari might have been uncertain he had heard it at all.

Drumknott ended up collapsing again against the immovable torso in front of him, shaking, and was held there gently by two hands – killer’s hands, politician’s hands, lover’s hands.

“I’m so sorry, Rufus,” he spoke softly to the golden head, now streaked with silver, eerily silent before him. The concerning voice in his head piped up without his consent, “I don’t deserve you.”

The silence stretched on for what felt like hours, but was probably less than five minutes. Drumknott eventually drew away, looking and feeling as tired as a man who had been awake for a week straight.

“No.” He said quietly. Then: “I’m going to bed.” He turned to the door, then as an afterthought added, “Stay.” He had seen enough (yet never enough, _never_ enough) of Havelock Vetinari for one day.

He slept fitfully until six in the morning.

***

Vetinari padded softly into the big bedroom upstairs.

“Rufus.” He whispered. The man in the bed turned over in his sleep.

“Rufus?” He tried again. Eyes suddenly snapped open to look at him in the dark.

“Yes?” came the comparatively deafening response in normal tones.

“The floor is very cold, Rufus. I’m not as young as I was.”

“Are you going to continue to spout the obvious or do you want something?” He didn’t sound annoyed. He didn’t sound _anything_. Vetinari desperately ignored the warning signs indicating the state in which he would spend the rest of his night (uncomfortably, on the floor) and ploughed onwards.

“Please may I join you?”

Drumknott all but growled, but flicked the covers to the other side of the bed over.

They slept peacefully until nine in the morning, when by some strange chance in sleep their hands found each other on top of the quilt.

The world, for once, continued without them.

 

 

 

* Indeed, an unfortunate passerby found that the strange curdled substance now filling his veins was quite delicious to those of a vampiric persuasion, and proceeded to make a tidy living from its sale to such trustworthy purveyors as Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler.

** As everyone knows, a man with his back to the wall is safe from all things corporeal and paranormal. The common wall serves well against such things as phantasmic hands and throwing axes.

*** An especially potent form of the emotion, which is sometimes distilled by certain wizards of the certainly-not-necromancing variety in order to add a little Fizz to an otherwise routine summoning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended to finish this with a bit about them subsequently fucking off together somewhere like the Ramtops and sort of quietly retiring while Vetinari continues being a nosy bastard etc. And then both die fourteen years later in a freak forest accident involving twenty yards of rope and a singularly angry mole. But I didn’t, as it didn’t quite fit. Here’s the idea, anyway, as I enjoyed it a lot (why do half my fic ideas for these two stem from Holmes and Watson in the end)  
> Please let me know what you thought! <3 I live for comments~


End file.
